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The Asian PostTue, 19 May 2020 19:51:50 +0000en-GBhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.14German inflation moves closer to ECB targethttp://theasianpost.co.uk/german-inflation-moves-closer-to-ecb-target/
http://theasianpost.co.uk/german-inflation-moves-closer-to-ecb-target/#respondThu, 11 Jul 2019 04:20:31 +0000http://theasianpost.co.uk/?p=51171BERLIN: German annual inflation accelerated to 1.5% in June but remained below the European Central Bank’s target, final data from the Federal Statistics Office showed. The reading for German consumer prices – harmonised to make it comparable with inflation data from other European Union countries – was revised up after preliminary data released at the ...

BERLIN: German annual inflation accelerated to 1.5% in June but remained below the European Central Bank’s target, final data from the Federal Statistics Office showed.

The reading for German consumer prices – harmonised to make it comparable with inflation data from other European Union countries – was revised up after preliminary data released at the end of June had shown prices increased by 1.3% year-on-year.

The ECB targets inflation of close to but below 2% for the euro zone as a whole.

Inflation in the euro zone has long been below the ECB’s target and the European Commission on Wednesday lowered its estimates for euro zone growth and inflation, saying uncertainty over U.S. trade policy posed a major risk to the bloc.

The ECB will next meet on July 25 and investors are split on whether the bank will pull the trigger on stimulus then or wait until its Sept. 12 meeting.

ECB Governing Council member Olli Rehn has said that if the ECB wants to fulfil its mandate, further monetary stimulus is now needed until the economy and inflation prospects improve.

The final data showed EU-harmonised prices rose by 0.3% on the month – revised up from 0.1%.

Now its 10th year of expansion, the German economy returned to growth between January and March, posting a 0.4% expansion, but the Bundesbank expects a small contraction in the second quarter. Activity in the manufacturing sector is already shrinking.

]]>http://theasianpost.co.uk/german-inflation-moves-closer-to-ecb-target/feed/0Intel discloses new security flaw in its chipshttp://theasianpost.co.uk/intel-discloses-new-security-flaw-in-its-chips/
http://theasianpost.co.uk/intel-discloses-new-security-flaw-in-its-chips/#respondWed, 15 May 2019 08:20:33 +0000http://theasianpost.co.uk/?p=48809SAN FRANCISCO: Intel has discloses a new security flaw in its processors that could allow potential attackers to steal sensitive data from Intel-powered computers or even cloud servers. The world’s top chipmaker called the new group of vulnerabilities embedded in the architecture of computer hardware as Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS). “MDS is a sub-class of ...

SAN FRANCISCO: Intel has discloses a new security flaw in its processors that could allow potential attackers to steal sensitive data from Intel-powered computers or even cloud servers.

The world’s top chipmaker called the new group of vulnerabilities embedded in the architecture of computer hardware as Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS).

“MDS is a sub-class of previously disclosed speculative execution side channel vulnerabilities and is comprised of four related techniques,” said Intel.

The security bug is capable of taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of Intel chips when a speculative execution is performed by the processors to improve chip performance.

Intel said the flaw was discovered by its internal researchers and partners, which was also reported by other researchers from other companies.

The security flaw was the most recent revelation of Intel chip bugs since two notorious hardware viruses involving Intel processors, nicknamed Spectre and Meltdown, caused panic among computer users last year.

]]>http://theasianpost.co.uk/intel-discloses-new-security-flaw-in-its-chips/feed/0What Really is a “Blockchain”?http://theasianpost.co.uk/what-really-is-a-blockchain/
http://theasianpost.co.uk/what-really-is-a-blockchain/#respondWed, 06 Dec 2017 15:38:28 +0000http://theasianpost.co.uk/?p=24101LONDON: Much has been said about the revolutionary potential of the blockchain technology. Besides its current use as the backbone to verify and record digital transactions of Bitcoin, the blockchain technology has also been touted as the technology that can replace expensive accounting and payment networks in the financial industry, prevent money laundering and improve ...

LONDON: Much has been said about the revolutionary potential of the blockchain technology. Besides its current use as the backbone to verify and record digital transactions of Bitcoin, the blockchain technology has also been touted as the technology that can replace expensive accounting and payment networks in the financial industry, prevent money laundering and improve transparency in book-keeping in just about any industry.

But, what exactly is a “blockchain”?

In short, a blockchain is a digital, decentralised, public ledger that records all information within the network of blocks. However, what does all that really mean? So let’s start by breaking down that sentence.

First, a blockchain is “digital”. What this means is that the blockchain is a virtual chain of information. Digital information is stored, generated and processed electronically.

Second, the blockchain is a “decentralised, public ledger”. This characteristic is one that makes the blockchain technology so exciting. Traditional banks use a centralised ledger system to keep track of transactions and accounts. The banks control the data that is stored and in turn have to spend money to ensure that the data is checked and that each transaction matches its records.

Blockchain, on the other hand, is an entirely different form of storing data. No master database controls the information of records. Instead many individual computers store and authenticate each transaction and record it in the blockchain network. It lacks a single point of control and is therefore described as being “decentralised” in nature.

How does it work?

In essence, a blockchain is a network of blocks that each hold information. For example, in the case of Bitcoin, each block records information on recent transactions of the currency. Once a block is completed, it goes into the blockchain and remains there as a permanent part of the database. As more transactions take place, more blocks get created, and more information is stored within the blockchain.

The blocks of information are connected to each other within the blockchain in a linear and chronological order, making it impossible to delete or fabricate, without messing up the sequence and alerting all the computers of the fraud.

The Foolish bottom line

Contrary to popular belief, blockchain technology is not that new of an idea. It was in fact, first described way back in 1991. However, only recently in 2008 did blockchain finally become conceptualised and put into use through the invention of Bitcoin.

Hopefully, this article has provided you with a brief description of this new and exciting technology.

]]>http://theasianpost.co.uk/what-really-is-a-blockchain/feed/0Facebook knows more about you than it sayshttp://theasianpost.co.uk/facebook-knows-more-about-you-than-it-says/
Mon, 02 Jan 2017 04:52:27 +0000http://theasianpost.co.uk/?p=4917Facebook has long let users see all sorts of things the site knows about them, like whether they enjoy soccer, have recently moved, or like Melania Trump. But the tech giant gives users little indication that it buys far more sensitive data about them, including their income, the types of restaurants they frequent and even ...

Facebook has long let users see all sorts of things the site knows about them, like whether they enjoy soccer, have recently moved, or like Melania Trump. But the tech giant gives users little indication that it buys far more sensitive data about them, including their income, the types of restaurants they frequent and even how many credit cards are in their wallets. Since September, ProPublica has been encouraging Facebook users to share the categories of interest that the site has assigned to them. Users showed us everything from “Pretending to Text in Awkward Situations” to “Breastfeeding in Public”. In total, we collected more than 52,000 unique attributes that Facebook has used to classify users. Facebook’s site says it gets information about its users “from a few different sources.” What the page doesn’t say is that those sources include detailed dossiers obtained from commercial data brokers about users’ offline lives. Nor does Facebook show users any of the often remarkably detailed information it gets from those brokers. “They are not being honest,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “Facebook is bundling a dozen different data companies to target an individual customer, and an individual should have access to that bundle as well.” When asked this week about the lack of disclosure, Facebook responded that it doesn’t tell users about the third-party data because it’s widely available and was not collected by Facebook. “Our approach to controls for third-party categories is somewhat different than our approach for Facebook-specific categories,” said Steve Satterfield, a Facebook manager of privacy and public policy. “This is because the data providers we work with generally make their categories available across many different ad platforms, not just on Facebook.” Satterfield said users who don’t want that information to be available to Facebook should contact the data brokers directly.

He said users can visit a page in Facebook’s help center, which provides links to the opt-outs for six data brokers that sell personal data to Facebook. Limiting commercial data brokers’ distribution of your personal information is no simple matter. For instance, opting out of Oracle’s Datalogix, which provides about 350 types of data to Facebook according to our analysis, requires “sending a written request, along with a copy of government-issued identification” in postal mail to Oracle’s chief privacy officer. Users can ask data brokers to show them the information stored about them. But that can also be complicated. One Facebook broker, Acxiom, requires people to send the last four digits of their social security number to obtain their data. Facebook changes its providers from time to time so members would have to regularly visit the help center page to protect their privacy. One of us actually tried to do what Facebook suggests. While writing a book about privacy in 2013, reporter Julia Angwin tried to opt out from as many data brokers as she could. Of the 92 brokers she identified that accepted opt-outs, 65 of them required her to submit a form of identification such as a driver’s license. In the end, she could not remove her data from the majority of providers. ProPublica’s experiment to gather Facebook’s ad categories from readers was part of our Black Box series, which explores the power of algorithms in our lives. Facebook uses algorithms not only to determine the news and advertisements that it displays to users, but also to categorise its users in tens of thousands of micro-targetable groups. Our crowd-sourced data showed us that Facebook’s categories range from innocuous groupings of people who like southern food to sensitive categories such as “Ethnic Affinity” which categorises people based on their affinity for African-Americans, Hispanics and other ethnic groups. Advertisers can target ads toward a group – or exclude ads from being shown to a particular group.

Last month, after ProPublica bought a Facebook ad in its housing categories that excluded African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, the company said it would build an automated system to help it spot ads that illegally discriminate. Facebook has been working with data brokers since 2012 when it signed a deal with Datalogix. This prompted Chester, the privacy advocate at the Center for Digital Democracy, to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Facebook had violated a consent decree with the agency on privacy issues. The FTC has never publicly responded to that complaint and Facebook subsequently signed deals with five other data brokers. To find out exactly what type of data Facebook buys from brokers, we downloaded a list of 29,000 categories that the site provides to ad buyers. Nearly 600 of the categories were described as being provided by third-party data brokers. (Most categories were described as being generated by clicking pages or ads on Facebook.) The categories from commercial data brokers were largely financial, such as “total liquid investible assets $1-$24,999,” “People in households that have an estimated household income of between $100K and $125K, or even “Individuals that are frequent transactor at lower cost department or dollar stores.” We compared the data broker categories with the crowd-sourced list of what Facebook tells users about themselves. We found none of the data broker information on any of the tens of the thousands of “interests” that Facebook showed users. Our tool also allowed users to react to the categories they were placed in as being “wrong,” “creepy” or “spot on.” The category that received the most votes for “wrong” was “Farmville slots”. The category that got the most votes for “creepy” was “Away from family.” And the category that was rated most “spot on” was NPR.